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The meeting was drawing to a close when Orphe brought the subject up for the first time.
"There is one more matter that has come to my attention which I would like to discuss."
It was too much to say a groan went around the table, not a single one of the blondies would ever allow themselves to be caught seeming disinterested in their duties. The meeting had been long, however, and all of them were eager to go to their respective homes, rather than listening to another elaborate point Orphe would try to make.
"Must you, Orphe?" Raoul spoke for everyone, "surely it can wait till tomorrow when all of us have attended to our duties outside of this room."
"Got an interesting brain to dissect in that lab of yours, or something?" Gilbert inquired, raising an eyebrow.
“Actually we are trying to modify a strand of DNA found in…” Raoul started to explain.
“And talking about it now will keep you separated from it that much longer.” Iason remarked coolly, effectively shutting down the conversation.
“Not that anything is waiting for you at home,” Marcus mention in a casual voice that had no one fooled. “When did you intent to buy a new pet, your rooms must be so empty.”
“That’s neither here nor there,” Aisha snapped, clearly wishing to steer away from the topic of Iason’s choice in pets and the implications of what else might be empty in the absence of a new one. “Orphe, whatever it is, you better show us.”
"It won't take long," Orphe assured, as he dimmed the lights in the room again and a projection became visible in the middle of the table.
At first it seemed none of the blondies assembled was sure what they were looking at. Footage from one of the Eos security cameras showed an empty hallway. It wasn’t long before a furniture walked down the corridor.
"What's so special about that?" someone asked, but fell silent again as a second furniture entered the scene, coming down the hall in the opposite direction.
It was clear from their uniforms that the furniture belonged to onyx households. For a moment they shuffled about awkwardly as they tried to let the other one pass. Being of the same level there was no protocol to follow on who should go first. Eventually one of the two grabbed the other by the elbows and spun the pair of them around.
"Why are you showing us this?" Whoever had spoken up this time was clearly annoyed.
"Because of this," came Orphe's answer.
One of the two furniture had looked up and pointed at something above the pair. The other looked up too now.
Before any of the elites watching could say anything more, the first furniture planted a quick kiss on the other's cheek, then quickly ran off in the direction he'd been going in.
Silence reigned in the conference room. Furniture had kissed furniture. It was something that had never crossed any of the elites' minds. In Eos, living appliances took care of walking, talking sexdolls. The idea of furniture displaying affection, of betraying anything that might resemble emotion, was unthinkable. Yet there it was. Proof that furniture could want something. And more importantly, could act on that desire.
"Do we know what prompted this behaviour?" Iason, ever the analyst, was first to break the silence.
"No direct cause," Orphe replied smoothly, "though this was found at the scene." He swiped the video footage away. It was replaced by the image of a bundle of green twigs with elongated leaves and white berries at its end.
"What is this? Aisha asked.
"A tree parasite known as mistletoe," Raoul replied promptly. "We have successfully eliminated it of course, but we keep a strand of it on file somewhere."
"It was hanging in the spot the first furniture could be seen pointing at," Orphe explained. "It has since been removed, but someone hung it there."
"Do we know who?" Marcus asked sharply.
Orphe spread his hands. "It was hung in a camera dead zone, any number of people passing by could have done it."
Marcus raised an eyebrow at that.
"Rest assured that we are now monitoring more carefully," Orphe snapped. Clearly he did not like being challenged on his own terrain. The goings on of Eos were his business after all.
"Meanwhile all floor leaders have been instructed to keep a closer eye on all furniture. It has been made clear that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable. We expect no further problems, protocol demands I inform you however. It is done."
And with that the meeting was adjourned.
It was, however, not the end of the problem. A week later Orphe, Aisha, and Raoul found themselves staring at several camera stills of different pairs of furniture kissing one another on the cheek. Bundles of mistletoe had been retrieved from every scene, and with Raoul's assurance that the plant did not come from anywhere in Tanagura Iason was asked to check if the black market was its source.
Not a single one of the elites understood how the kissing incidents and the parasitic growth were connected, but after so many occasions of correlation it was hard not to consider the possibility of causation.
The floor leaders were questioned but either knew nothing of the acts of defiance in the ranks of their subordinates, or choose not to divulge their knowledge.
Orders were issued among the furniture that mistletoe was a forbidden substance that Tanagura wished to eliminate and that anyone who encountered the plant was to report it to their floor leader immediately.
The elites were shaken. Although the blondies did not let on their worries, privately they agreed that this rebellion, as they saw it, had to be ended as quickly as possible. Furniture was supposed to be reliable. Problems, if any did occur, where expected to have to do with pets, while furniture sorted out the mess. Furniture being the source of the mess was a new and unsettling sensation.
A week after the order had gone out several floor leaders had reported incidents of mistletoe. The plants were exterminated and it seemed as if the matter had ended with the blondies none the wiser as to the origin of all the trouble.
Eventually it was Tomass, Aisha’s furniture and floor leader of Apex level, who shed light on the situation.
“A ruby furniture found the tale in a very old document, buried in the neural net. An old human custom for one of their religious holidays. Whenever two people would meet under a bundle of mistletoe they would kiss. The story spread across the floors of Eos and someone, somewhere acquired a sample of the plant. You know the rest, master."
Aisha sighed. "Leave the room Tomass."
"Yes, master Aisha." Tomass went to wait outside.
Aisha looked at Orphe. They were in Orphe's office where Aisha had brought Tomass to report.
"Well, that settles it then," Orphe closed a file he had been lookin at. "I'll make sure the file is permanently censored." All knowledge had to be preserved, but all knowledge was not for everyone. Tanagura was not afraid to manipulate the truth in order to ensure it's rule remained unchallenged. An old folktale was only a pinprick in the vast universe Amoi had made itself ruler over.
"We should mindwipe all furniture involved," Aisha stated coldly, once again demonstrating a lack of empathy that astounded even some of the other blondies. "They are compromised."
"That will not be necessary," Orphe overruled the suggestion. "The situation was already under control, and performing such a mindwipe on all furniture involved would take up time that could be used for better purposes." The head of Eos tower weighed his resources and decided, in this case, time was the more valuable commodity.
Aisha shrugged. "Suit yourself, but I think you should alert Raoul just the same. Better safe than sorry after all."
"Impossible," Iason's eyes shot daggers of ice at Orphe. "We have successfully tied down any and all imports of the plant. Be it in its plant form or as a string of DNA, mistletoe can no longer be bought in the black market."
"Then how do you explain this?" Orphe managed through gritted teeth.
On the monitor in front of them two furniture could be seen. Their head were bent close together as they were talking to each other in the corner of what seemed to be an empty room. Slowly one of the two put a hand in his pocket and with a trembling hand pulled out a single twig of mistletoe. It looked as if it had started to die slowly, from lack of water and, most likely the main cause of its demise, from being seperated from a parent plant for too long.
The second furniture gasped visibly at the sight of the sad looking twig, clapping a hand against their mouth. Their eyes followed the hand and the twig as they moved upwards, until the first furniture held the twig above their heads.
For a second nothing happened, and a tense silence hung between the two elites in the office, looking at the footage. And then the furniture kissed. It wasn’t one of the pecks on the cheek that they had seen before. It was an open mouth, sloppy kiss on the lips. The twig fell from fumbling fingers before those fingers laced into the short hair of the other. The kiss seemed to go on forever, and the elites stared. They seemed to be frozen, like a computer with a program error and did not move from their positions until the footage cut out.
Orphe cleared his throat. Iason turned his head to him and lifter an eyebrow.
“Is this a test Orphe? Clearly that twig is a very old sample, you did not need me to tell it had not recently been purchased. You’d do better to chemically interrogate the furniture in question.”
Orphe pulled something from a drawer in his desk and spun it in his fingers. It was the sprig of mistletoe, all berries missing and some of the dried up leaves barely attached to the stem. He did not confirm or deny that the only reason he had shown Iason the footage was because he simply wanted to see the other blondy’s reaction to the incident.
“They are in Raoul’s lab now. I was about to go there.”
“I’m coming with you,” Iason snapped, clearly not in the mood for games.
They arrived at the lab to find a prickly Raoul sitting behind his desk in a lab coat, his arms and legs firmly crossed, his face looking as if he had just bitten into a lemon.
“Raoul,” Orphe greeted.
“Orphe,” Raoul replied. “the subjects are in rooms two and three, Aisha is speaking to the first one in room two, you can go straight through. Iason, can I talk to you for a moment?”
Knowing himself dismissed, Orphe walked out of the office and towards the interrogation rooms. Iason, meanwhile, sat down in a chair across from Raoul and crossed his own legs.
“What is it you would like to discuss, Raoul?” he asked in a quiet, dispassionate voice.
Raoul cut straight to the chase. “Are you sure you should be here, Iason?”
An icy glint shot across Iason’s eyes.
“Orphe challenged my control of the market over this matter. I’d like to be a witness to it being put to bed.”
Raoul winced at Iason’s choice of words but refrained from commenting on it. Instead he chose a different approach.
“This is a professional challenge then?”
“Is there a reason why it would not be?” Iason shot back?
“You have a history with Orphe and Aisha over furniture.” Raoul tried to sound dispassionate, but some agitation started to creep into the edge of his voice.
Iason remained silent, but maintained eye contact with his friend.
“I’m just saying, don’t challenge them on this matter, Iason, please,” Raoul sighed eventually.
“You are confused,” Iason replied coolly. “You forget this matter does not involve my household.”
Raoul uncrossed his arms and held up his hands in defeat. Then he turned to his monitor.
“It seems Aisha and Orphe have moved on to the second subject.”
Iason shifted in his seat in order to have a better view of the screen. Raoul turned up the sound. Aisha and Orphe sat across from the subject, who was hooked up to the machine that pumped the chemicals into its brain.
“How did you hear about the mistletoe?” Aisha’s detached voice sounded.
“Someone found an old story in the neural net. I have no exact recollection of who told me first, master, it just seemed that at some point, everybody just kind of, knew.” The furniture’s voice sounded calm, detached, as if they were speaking about someone other than themself.
“Did you partake in the exchange of kisses on the cheek that occured before the mistletoe ban?”
“Maybe once or twice, master, I did not encounter the bundles or people underneath it often.”
“Did you report all mistletoe you knew of after the mistletoe ban?”
“No master, I knew Lev kept a twig.”
“It is your duty to report on illegal activity. Why did you not report this furniture?”
“Because I liked kissing him, master. Because I liked having an excuse to let him kiss me. Because I did not want him to be taken away.” The furniture’s voice was still detached, their brain too fogged with the chemicals to be able to produce any emotion, despite the implication of emotions behind the words.
“I felt like a person when he kissed me. He reminded me I used to be a person. The world is a cold place. You take a little love where you can. I had to be with him, I was pulled towards him when I did not have him near me.”
In the office Raoul and Iason had locked eyes again. They did not speak, there was no need to exchange the similar thoughts that ran through their heads.
Aisha looked at Orphe. “Now will you listen to me?”
Orphe sighed.
“Tell Raoul he can have these two for spare parts, and that he should prepare for a massive mindwipe.”